End of Semester Test: Texas English IIIA Submit Test
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24
Select the correct text in the passage.
Which two sentences in this excerpt from "Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau support the transcendentalist idea that the individual is
more important than government or society?
This American
n government - what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each
instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man: for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of
wooden gun to the people themselves...
But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a
government which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? - In which majorities decide only those questions to
which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree. resign his conscience to the legislation?
Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for
the law, so much as for the right. The or obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said
that a corporation has no conscience: but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.
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